Wuthering Heights Emily Brontë

Introduction

Background

Discussion Starters

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Wuthering Heights Emily Brontë

Wuthering Heights: Introduction

Is true love stronger than death?

Wuthering Heights: Introduction

In the late 1700s, Cathy and Heathcliff grow up together at Wuthering Heights, Cathy’s family home on the northern English moors.

Wuthering Heights: Introduction

Heathcliff arrives as a gypsy foundling. Cathy’s father, Mr. Earnshaw, raises him as a son.

Cathy is a strong-willed beauty who shares Heathcliff’s wild nature.

Wuthering Heights: Introduction

Alone together on the moors, Cathy and Heathcliff feel as if they are soul mates.

But to Heathcliff’s despair, outside forces begin to pull them apart.

Wuthering Heights: Introduction

Edgar Linton, the Earnshaws’ neighbor, draws Cathy into the genteel world of Thrushcross Grange.

Wuthering Heights: Introduction

We learn Cathy and Heathcliff’s story in flashbacks.

As the novel begins, Cathy is long dead.

Yet even in death, she has an unbreakable hold on Heathcliff.

Wuthering Heights: Introduction

Heathcliff is now master of Wuthering Heights

and also of Thrushcross Grange.

Wuthering Heights: Introduction

The wild gypsy boy has become a rich man,

and also a cold, cruel, tormented one. How? Why?

Wuthering Heights: Introduction

Wuthering Heights is a romantic tale of intense, tragic love—

the kind of love that leads to madness and destruction.

Does Heathcliff and Cathy’s love also bring hope for redemption?

Wuthering Heights: Background

The landscape of this novel is a raw, powerful force—almost a character in itself.

The novel takes place on the moors of Yorkshire in northern England.

Wuthering Heights: Background

A moor is a large, open area of marshy land.

It often has a top layer of peat, or decayed plant matter.

Peat may be dried and used for fuel.

Wuthering Heights: Background

The Yorkshire moors are covered with wild heath, or heather.

Wuthering Heights: Background

Dark sandstone crags, or cliffs, help create an atmosphere of desolation.

Wuthering Heights: Background

Emily Brontë lived most of her life in Yorkshire.

As children, she and her sisters and brother played on the moors much as Cathy and Heathcliff do in Brontë’s novel.

Wuthering Heights: Background

Not surprisingly, this landscape helped inspire the dark romanticism of Wuthering Heights.

Wuthering Heights: Discussion Starters

Discuss (1)

• Is love a decision, or is it more like a force of nature?

• When is love a positive, creative force?

• When is it a destructive one?

Wuthering Heights: Discussion Starters

Discuss (2)

• In what ways do our surroundings—the places where we live—help shape our personalities?

• Can people change significantly?

• Or do their basic natures always stay the same?